Secrets of the Fearless Read online

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  My great-great-great grandfather John Allen was snatched by the press gang when he was still a boy, and sent to sea. He found himself serving as a third-class boy on the famous frigate HMS Imperieuse. His captain, Lord Cochrane, was the most daredevil sailor of his time. (Patrick O’Brian’s character Jack Aubrey is based on him.) John must have taken part in many hair-raising escapades, both at sea and on land. Another member of the crew was a young midshipman, Frederick Marryat, who was one year older than John. He grew up to become a famous captain, and the writer of Mr Midshipman Easy, one of the most popular books of the nineteenth century.

  John was taken prisoner at the storming of an Italian fort in 1813, but he escaped, according to family legend, ‘with the help of a kind French lady’.

  He was discharged from the navy in 1815, at the age of twenty-two, when Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and the war with France came to an end.

  Introduction

  It’s 1807 and Europe is at war. Thirteen years ago, France was being turned upside down in a violent revolution, and many rich and noble French people were dragged to the guillotine, where their heads were cut off.

  A strong man has risen from the ranks of the army to become the leader of France. His name is Napoleon Bonaparte. Many people admire him. He’s a brilliant organizer, with modern ideas on how a country should be run. But he is, above all else, a soldier. A conqueror. One by one, he has invaded the countries around him. Italy, the German states, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland – they have all fallen into the power of France. Britain, protected by the waters of the English Channel, remains independent, but not for long, if Napoleon can help it.

  While his armies march on land, sweeping resistance aside, the picture at sea is very different. Britain’s great admiral, Lord Nelson, has outsmarted the French navy at every turn. Great battles have been fought, which the British have won. The last huge conflict was two years ago, in 1805, at Trafalgar on the coast of Spain. There Nelson’s fleet won the greatest battle of them all, while he lay dying of his wounds.

  Now, the task of the British navy is to keep the French ships penned into their ports and harbours. The British navy patrols the English Channel and the Atlantic, capturing French ships whenever it can and stopping any others from putting out to sea. Meanwhile, a British army has landed in Spain and is helping the Spanish to resist the French invaders.

  This huge national effort means that hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors are needed. Some men have volunteered, but not nearly enough. To make up the numbers, press gangs scour the countryside, snatching men from their homes and workplaces and sending them off to man the ships. And it’s not only men who work the great ships of war. Young boys are living, fighting and dying alongside them, as if they were men themselves.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  PART TWO

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PART THREE

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  PART FIVE

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  PART SIX

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  PART ONE

  OCTOBER 1807

  OUT OF EDINBURGH

  Chapter One

  It was a wild night, raw, with rain in the air. The bitter wind picked up a fallen pigeon’s feather by the castle at the top of the hill and whirled it all the way down Edinburgh’s long High Street to the palace at the bottom. It howled round the crazy jumble of chimney pots on the tops of the towering narrow houses, making the pigeons stagger on their ledges. Far down below, in the tight little wynds and closes, cats crept for shelter into doorways and under steps, fluffing out their fur.

  A man and a boy, their shoulders hunched against the cold, were walking down the hill, ignoring the bursts of song and laughter erupting from the taverns. Neither of them spoke until the man cleared his throat, put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, ‘The question is, John my boy, what do we do now?’

  ‘How should I know?’ said John, shrugging off his father’s hand. He moved on a step. He was cold, tired and very hungry, and wanted only to get back to their lodging.

  His father stayed still, shaking his head mournfully.

  ‘Johnny, I can see that you haven’t understood what’s happened to us, and I can hardly bear to break it to you. They’ve done it at last, the villains. They’ve destroyed me completely.’

  John shifted from one cold foot to the other.

  ‘Father, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Who’s destroyed us?’

  ‘Who? Why, Herriott Nasmyth, and that scoundrel of a lawyer. They’ve done what they set out to do long ago – cheated us out of everything, the house, our little bit of land, our few cows . . .’

  Cold fingers pinched at John’s heart.

  ‘The house? You don’t mean Luckstone?’

  Luckstone was home. It always had been.

  ‘Luckstone, yes.’ Patrick Barr had to clear his throat as he spoke.

  ‘They’ve taken Luckstone from us?’

  Patrick nodded. John stared at him, dazed. He’d been born at Luckstone, twelve years ago, in the old stone tower house with its thick walls and massive oak door, with the tiny turret on the roof and the arrow slits for windows.

  ‘I don’t understand. How could we ever lose Luckstone? Barrs have always lived at Luckstone. It belongs to us.’

  Patrick Barr sighed.

  ‘Were you not listening this afternoon, Johnny? Well, I don’t blame you if you weren’t. Four hours is an awfully long time to be stuck in a stuffy lawyer’s office, going over and round and getting nowhere. But the plain truth is that Herriott Nasmyth has done for us.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘He made up his mind to take Luckstone from me a year ago, and he’s set about it so cunningly – he’s ruined me. If we try to fight on, it’ll need money, the very substance we are so woefully without.’

  John swallowed hard. He could hardly take in the enormity of what had happened. Luckstone, where the old grey walls stood in a flower-studded meadow that ran down to the edge of the small sheltered bay, where he’d fished in every pool, jumped from every rock and fought every boy for miles around, and where his mother and his unnamed baby sister were buried in the kirkyard. Why hadn’t he listened more carefully this afternoon as the lawyer droned on? He wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. He wouldn’t have let it happen. He would have fought back, hard, with his fists if necessary.

  Another thought struck
him.

  ‘If we don’t have Luckstone any more,’ he said, ‘where are we to live? What are we going to do?’

  ‘That’s just what I was asking you,’ his father said, with solemn satisfaction at the coincidence.

  Not for the first time, John felt a rush of exasperation with his father.

  ‘How could you ever have let them do it?’ he said, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.

  Patrick Barr spread his hands helplessly.

  ‘I wish I knew myself. Mortgages, bond notes, credits, debits, interest, deeds, covenants . . . who can understand it all anyway?’

  The wind, even stronger now, was penetrating through John’s woollen coat, but it wasn’t the cold that was making him shiver.

  ‘I’m going back to the lodging house,’ he mumbled, turning away so that his father wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes, and he walked off fast down the narrow wynd that plunged down the steep hill off the High Street.

  It would have been utterly dark if light from a dozen candles hadn’t been streaming out from a first-floor window overhead. Sounds were floating down as well, the music of a fiddle and a harpsichord, men’s voices, a woman’s cry, laughter and the clink of bottles. John stopped and looked back, waiting for his father.

  ‘That’s him, up there,’ Patrick said, an unusual note of bitterness in his voice. ‘Nasmyth himself. This is his lodging. Listen to the man. Laughing like the demon he is. Drinking his way through my money – our money. You know what, Johnny, if he was to come down and stand before me right now, I do believe I might – well, I could punch him. Punch him.’

  John looked up, startled. His father’s normally mild face was suffused with red, and the blood vessels were standing out on his temples. John had been feeling almost blind with anger too, but the sight of his father’s expression alarmed him. He caught hold of Patrick’s arm.

  ‘Come on, Father. Let’s go.’

  Before they could move, a low door burst open, and Herriott Nasmyth himself, unmistakable in his dandified, long-tailed, tailored coat and polished silver shoe buckles, lurched out into the narrow wynd. Although John and his father were no more than six or seven steps away, Nasmyth didn’t see them. He was looking back over his shoulder, roughly tugging on the arm of a young woman, dragging her out into the wynd, ignoring her struggles to release herself.

  With a last vicious jerk, he pulled her free of the doorway. She was young and pretty, but John barely glanced at her. He was staring at Herriott Nasmyth himself, the man who had cheated him of his birthright. John’s fists were balled and his heart was pounding. He didn’t have time to say anything. Two other men had appeared now. One stayed in the shadows, and John saw only a glint of dark red hair and a long lean nose. The other was young and slender, with fair locks straggling down over the bright blue cloth of his coat collar, his blue eyes watery with drink.

  ‘Take your vile hands off me!’ the girl was panting, twisting her arm as she tried to wrench herself away from Nasmyth’s powerful grip.

  ‘It was a jest, Herriott,’ the young man said nervously. ‘I didn’t mean to – look, let’s play on. I’ll bet my horse against my sister. What could be fairer than that?’

  ‘You lost her, Sweeney. I won her. It was all in the cards. She’s mine now.’

  ‘I am not!’ the young woman shouted. ‘How dare you set me as a stake! Put me down! Let me go!’

  The fury in her voice seemed to goad young Sweeney. He set his weak mouth and plunged forward, trying to knock Nasmyth down. His blow was feeble, but lucky. It sent Nasmyth rocking on his heels, and the girl managed to shake herself free.

  ‘You wicked creature,’ she shouted at her brother. ‘My uncle will hear about this,’ and wrapping her cloak round her shoulders, she pushed past John and his father and darted up the wynd towards the High Street.

  Nasmyth, looking after her, caught sight of Patrick Barr. He stared at him through bleary eyes, and a slow smile spread across his flushed face.

  ‘A very good evening to you,’ he said mockingly, wobbling as he tried to make a low bow. ‘Allow me to present myself. The new master of Luckstone, at your service.’

  ‘You . . . you,’ choked Patrick, starting forward, but before he could reach Nasmyth, young Sweeney, whose temper was now at last aroused, came in to deliver another blow. He caught Nasmyth off balance and sent him reeling against the wall.

  Nasmyth shook himself, as if he was throwing off the alcoholic fumes in his brain, and fixed his narrowed eyes on Sweeney.

  ‘You’ll be sorry for that,’ he growled, groping in the pocket of his coat.

  The red-haired man had been barely visible, drawn back in the shadow behind the doorway, but now he ducked his head and stepped out under the low stone lintel into the wynd.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Herriott,’ he said urgently. ‘Stop this foolery. Now’s not the time to make yourself conspicuous.’

  But he spoke too late. John saw the light glint on something in Nasmyth’s hand. A second later, Nasmyth’s arm had lunged forwards. Sweeney gave a little cry, then doubled over and slowly crumpled to the ground.

  ‘Come away, Johnny,’ Patrick whispered in John’s ear, pulling him.

  The red-haired man had been leaning over Sweeney’s body but now he straightened up.

  ‘You’re a fool, Herriott,’ he said scornfully.

  ‘He was the fool, Creech. He insulted me. He tried to cheat me, too,’ Nasmyth said.

  John, backing up the wynd behind his father, looked over his shoulder and saw that Herriott’s face had gone a sickened white. Then his eyes were drawn to Creech, the red-haired man, who was staring intently at Patrick’s departing back.

  ‘Murder!’ Creech shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. ‘Help! A man’s been stabbed! The villains are getting away!’

  John felt his father start with shocked surprise and his hand close convulsively on his arm.

  ‘Run, Johnny! Quick! Run!’ he whispered.

  The panic in his voice infected John. He obeyed instinctively, hurtling out of the wynd in the wake of his father, who was already pounding down the High Street on winged feet. Behind him, he could hear windows being flung open, voices shouting and footsteps running on the cobble stones.

  ‘A man with a boy! Yes, an unprovoked attack!’ he heard Creech’s penetrating voice say. ‘Up that way, towards the High Street. If you’re fast you’ll still catch them!’

  Chapter Two

  John was half doubled over with a stitch in his side, and his breath was coming in painful gasps when he and his father reached their room at last. It was a small place at the very top of one of Edinburgh’s tall, tower-like houses, and they had taken the six flights of steep stone steps in flying leaps.

  As Patrick fumblingly tried to fit the heavy key into the door’s lock, a woman’s head, topped with a lace-trimmed cap, poked out from the room alongside. It was Mrs Armstrong, the landlady.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, good evening,’ panted Patrick, trying to make a polite little bow while his trembling fingers worked at the key.

  The landlady stepped out on to the small landing with a swish of her long skirts. She cocked her head flirtatiously to one side, making her grey ringlets bob against her cheeks.

  ‘Why, Mr Barr, whatever’s the matter?’ she said, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. ‘I heard your feet on the stair pounding away like hammers. I thought the devil himself must be after you.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, he is,’ said Patrick, trying to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Armstrong, but Johnny and I must go. At once, in fact.’

  ‘Go? But you can’t! It’s late! And I’m sure you haven’t even had any supper. If there’s something wrong with the room, dear Mr Barr, you only have to say . . .’

  John dived between them, wrestled with the key and managed to turn it at last. He darted inside and stood for a moment looking round helplessly, unsure of what to do. He knew without being told that there wasn’t a moment to lose. The hue and cry was up all
along the High Street. The whole city was buzzing with people. With the murdered man lying in his blood for all to see, and their rage stirred up by the sinister Mr Creech, they would be searching everywhere for a man and a boy. In these closely packed wynds, where everyone knew the business of everyone else, it would be only a matter of minutes before someone remembered Mrs Armstrong’s lodgers, father and son, strangers from Fife. The mob would burst in down below and race up the narrow spiral stair, and John and his father would be caught like rats in a trap. John’s eyes darted round the little panelled room. He and his father had brought few possessions with them to Edinburgh, expecting to spend only a day or two sorting out the troublesome business with the lawyers before returning in triumph to Luckstone. They had just one small chest, a bundle of clothing and a satchel containing papers and the little money that Patrick had been able to scrape together for the journey.

  John began to gather everything together. He crammed his father’s spare clothes into the chest, tied his own into a bundle, then began to collect the scattered papers and put them in the satchel.

  ‘. . . a cold pork pie and half a ham . . .’ he heard Mrs Armstrong say.

  ‘Well now, that’s very good of you, ma’am. But you must allow me to . . .’

  ‘No, no, my dear sir! I wouldn’t—’

  Her voice was cut off by a crash as, far down below, the heavy street door was thrust open.

  ‘Up there! Aye! At the top!’ came the excited voice of Maggie the old washerwoman who lived in a cubbyhole right by the door. ‘I heard them go up ten minutes ago! Shifty eyed, the pair of them. I knew they were up to no good. They didn’t fool me!’

  She was drowned out by the sound of footsteps beginning to run up the first stone steps of the long flight of stairs.

  Mrs Armstrong burst into the room where John was standing frozen in panic. Her normal leisurely manner had dropped away.